Monday, October 15, 2012

Poor George: Love and hate in nerd culture

Fanboy indignation can be pretty fucking
funny sometimes, but there are limits, and I found mine again halfway through The
People Vs George Lucas.

Nerd culture gets itself all worked up over
the strangest things, and the results can be entertaining. So I thought I’d
give the documentary a go when I saw it at the local DVD store for a dollar.
While the astonishing new theories it put forward – that the new Star Wars
films have been a bit shit and the remixing of the old films has been a crime against
art – are neither astonishing or new, it looked like it could be funny.

Because it can be funny to see somebody
splutter and vent in rage about something that isn’t really that important. It
can be funny to see somebody lose their shit over something that isn't worth it.

I lasted about 40 minutes into The People
Vs George Lucas, because it wasn’t funny anymore. It was just boring.

I gave up on the documentary once people
with terrible facial hair started singing a song about how George Lucas raped
their childhood, because that particular analogy has gone from smirking to irritating to offensive in
record time. (Although I do love theSouthPark episode
where Lucas and Speilberg do actually physically rape Indiana Jones, partly because it’s genuinely
disturbing, just as you think that cartoon can’t shock you anymore, and mainly
because Butters gets the last word, and doesn’t see what all the fuss was
about).

Look, I love Star Wars as much as the next
thirty-something guy. I was obsessed with the movies when I was eight years old
too, and it’s a love that will never die. It was worrying to see the
cack-handed changes made to the original films when they were released in the
late 1990s, but the films were still slightly magical and still incredible fun.
(It’s notable that The Empire Strikes Back was the one that needed the least
‘fixing’ and was still the most impressive, proving that new effects had nothing on
the old movies.)

And I didn’t even mind the prequels that
much. They were needlessly complicated, featured an inexplicable loss of mojo
from John Williams, thuddingly dull at points, and the simplicity of the space
action scenes were always way over-cooked – too many asteroids floating through
the space, or too many spaceships to keep track off, flying apart in a million
little pixels.

But Lucas still knew there was inherent
drama in vehicles travelling at insanely high speeds and people hanging on for
their lives over the abyss, and there was plenty of that too.

Unbelievably, in between all the
interminable senate meetings and painfully clumsy slapstick, there were moments
of pure joy, sometimes only a couple of seconds long, where it all came
together.

It’s there in Obi-wan’s feint in the fight
against Darth Maul, and Padme’s glorious costumes, and the fantastic editing in
the pod race sequence. There can be a long, unbearable scene where Anakin
leaves his mother, carrying all the weight and conviction of a fairground ride,
and then there will be six seconds of sublimely shot light sabre action in the
desert.

I was 24 when the Phantom Menace came out,
and it was the first time I really felt out of step with nerd culture. The
films weren’t great, but they weren’t the Worst Thing Ever. (That’s still Curse
of the Cannibal Confederates, folks…).

There is so much absolutism in the geek
world. Everything has to be the very greatest, or the very worst, which
sniffily avoids the fact that most of the movies and comics and TV shows lie
somewhere in the middle.

Where it exactly lies in the strata depends
partly on quality, and mainly on personal taste. I would happily put O Lucky
Man at the very top of my list, but understand that most people would rank it a
fair bit lower. The Star Wars prequels were somewhere in the middle. Better
than the Transformers films. Not as good as originals. Somewhere in there.

I’m sure most people probably feel the same
way – it’s not just a complete coincidence that the use of the word ‘meh’ took
off around the same time as the new films. The standard reaction seems to be
that they were a bit shit, and that kids are stupid because they do actually
think Jar Jar is funny.

But the ones who cared passionately – the
zealots – were always the ones to feel most betrayed, most personally
affronted, and slowly the narrative became ‘George has fucked us’.

The same thing is happening in comic book
culture, every day. Some people get so angry about Before Watchmen they give up
on comics altogether, others take an off-hand comment in an interview with a
creator as a direct personal slight.

Some people seem shocked to see
corporations act like corporations, when they’ve been doing it forever, or they
are knocked down when a writer or artist says something they don’t happen to
agree with, forgetting the fact that comic creators are actual human beings, who
don’t always act coherently, or honourably, or unselfishly.

I could go out now on the internet, and
easily find a dozen nasty complaints about the current state of the DC
universe, or how Bendis’ Avengers is just talktalktalk, or how incoherent the
new Morrison comic is, and there can be some real anger there. Real hate.

I remain as baffled – and kinda exhausted –
by all of it as I ever was. And I still think it’s a bit funny sometimes. But
not as often as I used to.

And hey, the rage isn’t just confined to
nerd culture. In my day job, I get hate-filled emails from members of the
public on an hourly basis, telling me I’ve done something that was a personal
affront to their sensibilities. (I got a pretty thick skin for that kind of
thing, but also have the self-confidence to know that these moaners don’t know
what the fuck they’re talking about.)

There is rage on the commuter bus in the
morning, anger at the local sports ground, and real hatred on busy city roads.
It doesn’t actually spark up into actual violence all that often – we’re not
living in the Middle Ages anymore – but it’s there in everyday life.

I guess I just see a lot more of it in nerd
culture, because I’m happily wallowing in that culture every day. But there is
so much anger at so many silly things, like a new comic book, or Star
Wars, that it inevitably sours the whole mix.

Because the love of a good story or geek experience
is no match for the real thing.

I love comic books more than any
other medium. Overall, I like ‘em more than the movies, and more than TV, and
more than music. There is something about the blend of words and pictures, and
the ability to do absolutely anything with them, that really sings to me.

But there isn’t a single comic that means more
to me than things in real life - things like the love for my wife, for my friends, for my family. There is nothing in comics that gets me as angry as I feel when I see or hear of some great injustice in the real world.

These nerd things are entertainments, that
can move us and make us laugh and make us angry, but they’re still just
entertainments. Art can reach across the centuries and
speak to me, but it’s nothing to the feeling of comfort and love I get when my
wife takes my hand. Art can touch me inside the soul, and remind me of something
sublime in my own life, but that doesn’t compare to her smile, or when I make
her laugh.

While comics can remind me of the feelings I have
when I see an old friend for the first time in ages, there is no comparison to the actual meeting. When I read a comic book I don't like, I don't worry about it, but I do worry about the way our society can be callously indifferent to suffering. There are things to be angry about in this world, and the Phantom Menace just ain't one of them.

There is only so much sneering I can take, and a little perspective is always welcome. It's only a fucking movie.